Young Syrians shouldn’t be the lasting victims of this bloody war

When we think about the crisis in Syria it’s only natural that we start with the immediate threats to life – violence, disease and hunger. But for Syrian children the problems don’t end there. As the conflict approaches the start of its fourth year, young Syrians are seeing their right to an education snatched away by a civil war they definitely didn’t cause and probably don’t fully understand.

The violence in Syria has transformed the country. 125,000 have been killed Polio has re-emerged, and towns are under siege. Nothing is the same. In Education, 97 out of 100 Syrian children used be enrolled in schools. Today, if Syria’s refugees were a country they would have the worst enrolment rate in the world – five times worse than sub-Saharan Africa. That’s not just a handful either – it’s more than a million children – half of all those that have fled the country.

Whilst of course we hope for a political solution as soon as possible, we have to plan for the worst, and that means accepting that we need a long term, sustainable ways to get these children into education.

Today, in Kuwait, world powers, regional governments, philanthropists and the private sector are coming together to gather funds for the Syrian crisis. And the UN Under Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos has put education centre stage. That’s vital because at the moment, providing for education is the most underfunded part of the UN’s appeal.

So it’s absolutely right that the British government does what it can to support the UN’s unprecedented $6.5billion appeal. But they should be even more ambitious.

Here’s an example of how they can do just that in Lebanon. Syria’s tiny neighbour has a population of under 4.5 million, but since the start of the war they have taken in more than 850,000 refugees – about half a million of them children.

The Lebanese government has demonstrated enormous generosity in opening the country’s schools where they can, but there are now 300,000 refugee children who can’t find a place. Absorbing all these refugees would be the equivalent of London having to take on the combined school populations of Manchester and Birmingham. That’s simply far too many to incorporate into the existing system. So they need international help – but even if the UN’s appeal is fully funded, one in four children will still miss out. That’s why Labour are calling on the UK government to back radical plans to get young Syrian children in Lebanon back into education.

The plan centres around ‘double-shifting’ – allowing Syrian children to use Lebanese schools when local children have gone home. This would be supported through further places in community centres and temporary buildings, with instruction provided by Lebanese and international NGOs, and in some cases we could look at the temporarily hiring of Syrian teachers.

The scheme, devised by Overseas Development Institute Director Kevin Watkins and supported by Gordon Brown, would cost around $500 million over three years, and would also look at tearing down language barriers to allow Syrian children to learn in a language they understand and ditch rules which bar children who no longer hold their old Syrian education documents from sitting exams.

It won’t be easy, and although the scheme is as cost-effective as possible it isn’t cheap. But the stakes couldn’t be higher. The world is faced with a choice: we act now, or we watch up to two million children lose their right to learn – and of course if we want to ensure that all of Syria’s children regain their right to an education this plan can only be one piece of the jigsaw.

But the alternative to action could be even more costly. The world simply cannot afford to let a generation of Syrians grow up without an education. It’s a tragedy for the children, it’s heartbreaking for their parents and its destabilising for the Region. So we should think of the children, but we should act out of a wider interest too. The last thing the world needs is another festering problem in the Middle East – we have to step in, now.

So today in Kuwait, the British government should be doing everything it can to give these children a chance. They should be galvanising the international community. They should back this plan for Syrian children in Lebanon. They should work to give all Syrian children an education – and give them back their future.

Jim Murphy is Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. You can see his Buzzfeed post here.